Tree Knocks Out Electric Service

Electric service was knocked out for about 15 minutes for 3,700 Pennsylvania Power & Light Co. customers in Allentown's West End when a tree fell on power lines last night.

Shortly after the problem, PP&L area manager Gail Stein said power was back for all but 13 customers closest to where the problem originated. It was expected to take about three hours to restore their service, she said.

A large, old tree fell on the lines in the 1800 block of Union Street about 8:30 p.m. A high tension line and "at least half a dozen service lines" were affected, Allentown Fire Lt. Russell Henrick said.

"When that wire went down," Henrick said, "it caused a breaker to short-circuit at a substation at Sumner Avenue."

The city parks department was on the scene quickly to cut up the tree and remove it so a PP&L crew, which also responded within minutes, could repair the lines, Henrick said.

The outage caused no major problems for Allentown Osteopathic Medical Center at 18th and Hamilton streets, where auxiliary generators kicked in seconds after the power in the emergency room went out, a hospital supervisor said.

Allentown police dispatchers sent fire police officers to major intersections at 13th Street and west to direct traffic because the outage knocked out traffic signals.

Stein said the PP&L crew isolated the problem to the 1800 block of Union Street by doing switching. "If power is dependent on one area and you switch that dependency to another area, that's switching," Stein said. "You're not putting anyone out of power by doing that. You're just switching the load around."